Latest Social Media News

Social Media doesn't work for the vast majority of small businesses.

That was the main message in the USA Today article titled, Study: Social media a bust for small businesses, published on April 17th, 2013. From the news item:"About 61% of small businesses don't see any return on investment on their social-media activities, according to a survey released Tuesday from Manta, a social network for small businesses. Yet, almost 50% say they've increased their time spent on social media, and only 7% have decreased their time. What businesses are trying to get out of social media: 36% said their goal was to acquire and engage new customers, 19% said to gain leads and referrals, and 17% said to boost awareness. Facebook was most cited as the hardest to maintain social-media platform, according to the survey." There is a big lesson in this data...

 

What you want from social media may be very different from what it is.

Via Martin Gysler

In my last four posts I’ve shared some of the lessons that I’ve learned from helping set up lullubee.com, a new business that makes and markets kits for making crafts. After we launched the site and figured out how to take ordersand ship products, the next task we faced was to get more visitors to the site, and ultimately more sales. In the next few posts I’ll cover several of the techniques we implemented, but in this post I’ll focus on Facebookmarketing.

 

The first thing we did was to set up our Facebook Page, as recommended in Facebooks “Four Steps to Business success on Facebook“.

 

Once you set up your page, you need to get users to visit it and, hopefully, to “like” it. The reason you want people to like your page is that your posts will then appear on that users news feed. Over time this will allow you, according to Facebook, to start “building loyalty and creating opportunities to generate sales.” The first method to get likes is to promote it on your own website using Facebook social plugins. As this costs nothing, you may as well do it, but the percentage of visitors that click on these is typically very small. The second is to purchase Facebook Ads that persuade people to visit your page and to like it. The irony of spending money to promote our Facebook page instead of our site was not lost on us.

Via Martin Gysler

Creating online courses is fun! What happens though, when you are in the promotion phase? Find 8 great ways to promote your online courses in this mini tutorial.

 

Apart from using compelling content, you can support your eLearning activity with a series of other actions.

 

When looking at Best Practices by our customers (both from eFront and TalentLMS) we notice thatmost educators invest in specific things.

Via Martin Gysler

Starbucks and Blackberry, for example, has understands that country pages that featured localized content in addition to the global initiatives fostered interaction as much as 10 – 15x than those which featured English-only content. Maybe it's time for everyone to do something on this way. I see the difference, since I publish in several language on my Facebook, fan page, and you? OK, this is not an issue for people who speak only one language in their country or who are not active internationally. [note Martin Gysler]

 

The world is becoming a much smaller place. But even with social media contributing to a globally connected society, businesses that continue to take a global approach to social content and engagement may be missing opportunities for greater resonance and relevance. While a global presence is necessary for any organization hoping to connect with customers around the world, placing reliance on one prevailing strategy is just the beginning. In any web strategy, including social and also mobile media, localization is king.

 

Read more: http://www.briansolis.com/2012/01/digital-localization-optimizes-global-strategies-to-improve-experiences-and-results/

Via Martin Gysler